Severe traumatic craniomaxillofacial (CMF) fracture commonly occurs due to motor vehicle accidents (including air bag deployment), sports injuries, war injuries and physical assault. One-third of all war injuries are CMF injuries, often involving severe comminution and extensive loss of tissue caused by blast and high velocity mechanisms.1,2 Traumatic injuries of the CMF skeleton lead to both functional and psychosocial disabilities. Bony reconstructive procedures, such as correction of craniomaxillofacial deformities, through elective osteotomies and bone graft stabilization, also represent complex healing scenarios for CMF skeletal structures.
Successful healing of these injuries and reconstructive procedures relies on accurate reduction and internal stabilization of bone fragments with complex morphologies in 3D space. Current fixation technology is focused on plates and screws, however, this technology is limited to regions of the facial skeleton with sufficient bone density for screw purchase. Furthermore, application of such “hardware” is associated with morbidities related to the hard and soft tissue disruption inherent in the procedure as well as hardware profile.3 Reported rates of re-operation for CMF hardware removal, for instance, are as high as 50%.4 
The development of non-metallic thin devices with an initial stiffness close to that of bone (to minimize stress shielding), which can reduce their stiffness through resorption as healing progresses, is a goal of biomaterials research in fracture, graft and osteotomy segment stabilization.5,6,7 Yet current resorbable hardware is cumbersome with high profiles that are undesirable in many regions of the CMF skeleton, once again limiting sites of application and requiring significant dissection to allow effective application. The ideal fixation technique for the CMF skeleton would therefore be a biocompatible, bioresorbable, low profile system that bonds to the surface of bone, remains flexible enough to allow for semi-stabilized accurate reduction of bone fragments in 3D space at multiple sites, and can then be cured to rigidity to finalize stabilization of the fragments. Furthermore, the ideal fixation device would be translucent in this flexible state, enabling the visualization of fracture lines for more accurate reduction. The absence of this characteristic is another shortcoming of current fixation technologies.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide a bone stabilizing implant requiring less bone exposure with an application procedure that creates less tissue destruction than current devices, which can be bonded directly to bone, allows initial semi-stabilized fracture site flexibility, fracture line visualization through the implant if possible, and can be cured to yield a robust construct able to withstand physiologic CMF loading.